Let a Managed IT Services Company Help You to Decide which Anti-Virus Software Is the Best for You

August 7, 2013 by ·

When it comes to anti-virus software, there is no one better to help you to identify the best software than a managed IT services company. There are plenty of anti-virus programs out there, all claiming to be infallible, but making it really hard for ordinary people to verify that and make the right choice.

However, if you consult a managed IT services company, such as Dolomite Technology, their employees will explain to you what benefits anti-virus software brings and what your priorities should be, helping you to asses which your best option is.

An anti-virus is not a luxury, but a must, as it will prevent, detect and quarantine, delete or block viruses, as well as other computer malware, such as adware, Trojans, worms, spyware, etc.

Although installing and using an anti-virus program is not so difficult, the reasons why you need to contract a managed IT services company go from learning how to pick the right program, to making the right settings depending on the purpose with which the computer is used, what you need from it and what you want to protect, among others.

Furthermore, a specialist can always employ a better and more complex anti-virus system in order to detect the malware on your computer, as many of these infestations are slicker and escape a non-expert.

Another problem about running anti-virus software, especially if you are an inexperienced user, is that you will most likely not understand the language employed, so will not know what decisions to make when the program asks for your confirmation or action. This could lead to deleting important files, which, although infested, are still very much required by your computer in order to run normally.

You therefore need to rely on experts with a vast experience in using anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-malware solutions. At Dolomite, our professionals have a wide experience in dealing with issues like installing anti-virus software, running a scan and deciding how to get rid of a virus without losing precious information from your computer.

At Dolomite, we listen to your questions and requests, we evaluate all the information you give us and we offer professional solutions, so that you never again have to worry about the safety and integrity of your system. With our managed IT services, you can forget all about viruses and their harmful actions!

Filed Under: Anti-Virus, Security · Tagged: , , ,

What Is a Computer Virus and How to Protect Yourself Against It with Managed IT Services

March 14, 2013 by ·

Computer viruses come in all shapes and forms, and they pose a permanent threat to your software, your files, even your hardware – a threat efficiently eliminated by Managed IT Services by providing permanently updated anti-virus solutions for your system.

Computer viruses are extremely varied. They do not behave the same way, they do not replicate or harm your computer the same way. Here are the most frequently encountered types:

  • Trojans – these programs look like useful, legitimate tools that perform a certain function on your computer, but, once installed, they can damage your computer by ruining or deleting certain files, and they compromise the security of your system by providing another computer access to your contents.
  • Worms – this virus subclass spreads through your system by replicating itself infinitely. Worms can send themselves through email systems without human aid, burdening your system so much that servers and individual computers may not be able to handle the surge of data and stop responding.
  • Macro viruses – they use the macro language of certain applications to spread themselves, and they usually infect spreadsheets and text documents.
  • Time bombs – these viruses are programmed to set off at a specific time, or their “explosion” is triggered by a certain pre-programmed event, like the person who created them gets fired.

Managed IT services can protect your computers against all these malicious attacks. These services take over the security management of your computer system and they provide permanent monitoring, virus scanning and instant response to attempted virus attacks. Managed anti-virus services perform scans and clean-ups through software installed on the computers licensed; outsourcing virus protection by turning to a service of this type also means that you will not need servers or expensive software of your own to scan your system, allowing you to reduce both capital costs and overhead expenses.

Managed IT services are not free, but the fees paid are insignificant compared to the costs of replacing the software and hardware damaged on the event of a virus attack, not to mention the costs caused by data loss and IT downtime.

If you are looking for a reliable, reputable provider of managed IT services, Dolomite is one of the best possible choices: their managed IT services are not only reasonably priced, but also comprehensive, using the latest technology to provide 24/7 system monitoring, with state-of-the-art virus protection included into many of their business packages, free of charge.

Filed Under: Anti-Virus, Computer Repair, General News · Tagged: , , ,

Fortinet – BYOD – Bring Your Own Device and You Will Not Regret It!

February 21, 2013 by ·

As everybody knows, the business environment is changing every day, bringing personal devices into the business process and slowly erasing the thin line between the personal Smartphone or tablet and the PC at work. Given the circumstances, the BYOD, standing for Bring Your Own Devices, is an abbreviation that we find discussed more and more, both online and offline.

What Is BYOD and What Is Its Purpose?

In order to answer this question, we first have to review the large variety of relations encountered within a company and between two or more companies:

  • Between managers and employees
  • Between employees and partners
  • Between  all of the above and customers
  • Between customers

Often without anyone realizing it, many of these relations happen at the core of the company, using the most popular of the company’s communication environments: the network.

Using the network to connect so many people, all bringing their own devices in the process, the company always exposes itself to inherent threats, many of them making their entrance in the system without being spotted by the people who interact using their devices.

Fortinet BYOD security is a high level, state of the art system developed by Fortinet in order to allow employees, contractors and workers to use their own devices safely in order to communicate on your network and ensure your company’s progress.

What until recently was a constant fight with spam, a continuous investment in firewalls, hardened Wi-Fi technologies, network segmentation and a lot more, is now just a detail in the process meant to turn your business safe and profitable.

With high flexibility and low costs, this Fortinet service encourages you to secure your business network without interfering with any of the Mobile Device Management and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure systems.

Fortinet’s BYOD solution is so flexible that it allows you to deploy the exact amount of protection you need, by combining different levels of familiar concepts, such as the well known and completely configurable firewall.

The intrusion prevention system can also be configured to meet your company’s security and flexibility needs. The already known antimalware/antivirus is now included in the package and no extra fee is required.

Some features developed over the past few years, such as application control and data loss prevention, are also fully integrated in the system, allowing you to decide who has access to what.

To ensure that attacks are not being initiated online, the software is not being seeded and that browsers are not being exploited, Fortinet BYOD solution came up with another great feature – web content filtering.

For the vast majority of companies for which tunneling is one of the great challenges, a VPN solution was added. As if it were not enough, protection was highly increased with the two-factor authentication, which requires more than one attribute in order for one to be able to authenticate on the network. The level at which this feature is integrated is fully customizable and can differ from company to company.

All in one, Fortinet BYOD solution is a leading technology that we can expect to see surviving for the following years and turning into the end user experience on any company network.

Filed Under: Cloud Computing, PCI Compliance, Security, Tablets · Tagged: , , , , , ,

Fortinet Cloud Computing Management – To Keep Your Business Down to Earth

February 14, 2013 by ·

Fortinet Cloud Computing Management, or simply Cloud Management, is a solution offered by Fortinet’s FortiCloud product, an extension of FortiGate, along with a log retention program. Without requiring the installation of additional software or hardware, this feature provides reports and analysis of the traffic on log retention and configuration in real time.

For a better application and for increased traffic visibility, FortiCloud added a tool that simplifies the subscription management process. Part of a compliance and security program, the log retention, it administrates a separate storage system.

This process can be cumbrous, and that is why Cloud Management represents a step ahead, doing everything automatically, storing the information from the logs in the cloud. System events, traffic, web, security events or applications information can be stored too.

Another useful feature of this system is the real-time alert and monitoring. Allowing the monitoring is a way to improve the user’s experience and certify the network’s critical availability.

For the network’s security and health, reports and analyses are vital, which is why FortiCloud came with a reporting and analysis tool for their program.  For any compliance, custom reports are always available, enabling a shortcut in case that similar requirements are made. It can even send an email with different period PDF reports.

In order to maintain the high-level performance and security standards, the devices within the network are kept under the same configuration.  Doing the same for the operating system firmware, Cloud Management counts on the advantages of the latest features.

Additionally, the system’s security is top-level. Any type of information changes between the clouds and the device is encrypted. This way, the data can be seen or retrieved by the owner only.

For a good start, Fortinet’s FortiCloud provides clients with a free 1GB dashboard widget for licensing after registering the device.

Besides the application and traffic visibility, real-time monitoring, log retention hosting, analysis of the log reports and management of the configuration, Cloud Management also provides: a dashboard for real-time monitoring and a widget for system, a log viewer, filtering the download capability, drill down analysis for network and independent users, reports generating  and device management, including back-up for configuration and firmware, history of the configuration, script manager and profile alert for real-time monitor.

Along with this, Cloud Manager has its benefits:

  1. It comes with a central, simplified management system;
  2. It allows individual or aggregated views of the device;
  3. It allows visibility over the applications and traffic;
  4. It offers log retention hosting, expandable if required;
  5. It provides real-time alerts for monitoring;
  6. It delivers customized reports;
  7. It lets the user analyze the traffic;
  8. It allows thorough configuration management, backup and upgrades;
  9. It does not require specific software or hardware;
  10. It does not need any deployment on premise and at least no operation and maintenance costs.

This is what Cloud Manager offers to its clients together with the pack of benefits that come with using the last hour Fortinet FortiCloud services for networks based on cloud security management.

Filed Under: Cloud Computing, Security · Tagged: , , , ,

The Fortinet Antivirus – Safe Navigation at All Levels

February 7, 2013 by ·

The Worst Enemies of Nowadays Businesses – Malware Infections

Servers, networks and endpoints are constantly threatened by malware infections and their protection or cleaning costs more and more companies, from government agencies to manufacturers and service providers huge amounts of money. Leaving the financial implications aside, when problems occur, solving them takes valuable time, that could be used for more productive purposes, not to mention that, on most occasions, the process leads to the loss of important data.

The information that is not lost could always leak and be used by your competitors or third parties, and that can be very serious, especially if we are talking about bank accounts or new products designs. To top all these, there are some powerful viruses out there, capable of taking down entire networks and of deleting valuable information from databases and servers.

Excellent Performance

The Antivirus technology developed by Fortinet uses the latest viruses signatures and the highest performing detection engines in order to ensure real time protection on several layers, against old, common, new and rare malware, from viruses to spyware, worms and not only, no matter if they threaten the safety of websites, email systems or file transfer means.

The performance of the Fortinet Antivirus is ensured by the FortiASIC™ Content Processors, a significant part of the FortiWiFI and FortiGate, two important Fortinet products, responsible for accelerating the process of scanning signatures and that of detecting heuristics or anomalies of any kind. The performances delivered make this antivirus perfect for protecting any assets, from entry-level appliances to data center platforms and several gigabits core networks.

Flow-Based Inspection

The security platforms of Fortigate include three antivirus databases that are proxy-based and a flow-based antivirus option. The latter allows the scanning of files of any format or size, without compromising on performance. The inspection option, flow-based, makes possible the scanning of compressed files, all with the purpose of detecting hidden threats. You have the freedom to choose any antivirus engine, but your choice influences the balance between performance and security, so it has to be made responsibly.

Complete Protection against Malware

The common protocols in the tunneling field can benefit from the encryption/decryption performances like L2TP, PPTP, SSL, IPSec and host integrity on-demand verification, allowing the inspection of the encrypted content, like the traffic sent through VPN connections.

Fortinet, through its antivirus, supports SMTP, IMAP, POP3, HTTP, P2P, IM and FTP content inspection, even in compressed files.  In order to provide protection to endpoint devices as well, the FortiClient™ security agents extend their action over remote desktop computers, smartphones and laptops, even if they operate outside the network perimeter.

Fortinet FortiGuard Services

The Fortinet antivirus is regularly activated through the FortiGuard Services. The FortiGuard team in charge of threat research came up with competitive, last hour updates for the antivirus signatures and with easy to implement protection measures against any threats identified at the content level.

To conclude, Fortinet Antivirus is the service that can make the difference between highly performing websites and servers and activity blockages or unnecessary investments.

About Dolomite

Dolomite Technology is a Managed Service Provider that provides services and consulting on technology services to customers across the nation. A core concept of of Dolomite’s service portfolio is security services. To learn more about Dolomite services please contact us. We are more than happy to discuss Fortinet or other security services.

Filed Under: Anti-Virus, Security, Spyware · Tagged: , , , ,